President Barack Obama is due to unveil a program for the expansion of US involvement in the Syrian war against the Assad regime and al Qaeda elements. He is expected to announce in an address at the US Military Academy at West Point Wednesday, May 28, military training for moderate rebels and a regular supply of sophisticated weapons, including possibly anti-air systems. The Arab world perceives this as a move to counteract Russian, Iranian and Hizballah intervention in the Syrian conflict - or even as payback for Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The Palestinian Hamas is restored to the Iranian fold with the pledge of an annual allowance of $200 million, military assistance and advanced weapons, in return for a public avowal of Hamas support for Iran’s Syrian policy and Bashar Assad. The deal was secretly sealed Thursday, May 22 at a meeting in Doha between Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Hamas’s politburo head Khaled Mashaal. It places Hamas squarely in the radical Iran-Syrian-Hizballah bloc and re-opens the Gaza Strip door to dominant Iranian influence.

The suspension of US-UK non-lethal military aid to the Syrian opposition in the north – ostensibly to keep it out of Islamist hands – is only part of the story. The aid will be put in the hands of the pro-American rebel forces deployed to man a new security zone the two powers are carving out in the south, as a barrier against al Qaeda’s encroachments on the Jordanian, Israeli, and Lebanese borders, as well as Damascus. Two war rooms in Irbid, Jordan will run the operation under a US general.

The US approved 20 F-16 fighter planes for Egypt, part of a $1 billion foreign aid package, Tuesday, Dec. 11, the day scheduled for massive rival demonstrations for and against President Mohamed Morsi’s constitutional referendum Saturday, Dec. 15. The first four jets will be delivered the day after Barack Obama’s swearing-in as president, and coincide with Israel’s January 22 elections. Obama is telling the Middle East that he stands by his backing for the Muslim Brotherhood, including the radical Palestinian Hamas.